The invention relates to a pet nail filing device. In particular, the invention is a filing device comprising a belt-driven grinding drum for both filing down a pet's nails, and for acclimating the pet for such filing. The pet's nails are held against a rotating grinding drum mounted within a housing and exposed from through openings in a mask cover, thereby both conditioning the nail for grooming and filing the nails.
Pets are companions to many people and are part of many families. Among the most popular household pets are dogs, cats, and birds. Along with owning a pet comes the responsibility of caring for the pet, including tending to the animal's grooming needs.
A common grooming need is clipping the nails of the animal in order to reduce the pain that the animal experiences just by walking around. It is also important to avoid injury to the pet, to others, and damage to property. This task usually involves holding the paw of the animal in one hand and clipping the nails with a clipper held in the other hand. Since the pet is often uneasy during the performance of this task, the animal often moves about in an attempt to escape the owner's hold. Thus, it is often necessary for one person to hold the animal while a second person actually cuts the nails.
Many pet owners are apprehensive when cutting their pets' nails out of concern for hurting the animals. It is very common for the vein growing into the animal's nail to be injured when cutting the nails—causing bleeding and pain to the animal. The longer the nail is allowed to grow, the further the vein extends therein. Thus, it is necessary not only to keep the animal's nails at a shorter length to avoid injury to the animal, but to condition the vein to retract so that the nail can be harmlessly shortened.
There is some suggestion in the prior art to use motor driven manicuring devices—intended for humans—to cut pet nails. These devices resemble hobby cutting tools, such as sold under the tradename DREMEL. Despite any such suggestion by some people, it is not possible, and downright inhumane to use these devices on pets. The noise, vibration, and visual image of moving cutting parts will frighten and hurt the animal.
Thus, there exists a need for a pet nail filing device that would ease the task of keeping a pet's nails short, and greatly reduce the pain experienced by millions of domesticated animals. Such a device would enable the pet owner to keep the pet's nails short without risking any harm to the pet. Further, the nail filing device would eliminate the need of a second person to hold the pet while the trimming is being performed.
While the units available may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present invention as disclosed hereafter.